Bread and circuses

The Department of Education’s “invitation to bid,” which appeared in the Inquirer on Nov. 20, 2014, states: “The DepEd intends to apply the sum of Two Million Five Hundred Fifty Six Thousand Eight Hundred Pesos (Php 2,556,800.00) to eligible payments under the contract for the Supply and Delivery of Cheese Balls and Assorted Grocery Items (REBID),” detailed as follows:

Lot Description Cost
1 supply and delivery of cheese balls P543,320
2 supply and delivery of assorted grocery items P2,013,480

The particulars of this requisition are far from being the detailed and particular description we expect it to be, because the exact number or quantity, the unit price, and the specific kind and quality of each item had not been made evident and clear. Is this what the Procurement Law requires? How will you order something you want delivered to you without specifying both quantity and quality?

The “end-user” is shown to be the Employees Welfare and Benefits Division. How many employees does the DepEd have? How many cheese balls can P543,320.00 buy? If the winning bidder delivers only 100 pieces, can he be charged with shortchanging the DepEd when the quantity was never specified in the first place? And what about the quality, when there are as many grocery items as there are an errant politician’s alibis for having hidden and unexplained wealth? How can you monitor and check the distribution of P2 million worth of “assorted grocery items”?

The very vagueness, the almost intentional carelessness, of the description opens wide the door of opportunity for fraud and deceit to come in.

On Oct. 5, 1789, thousands of women marched 13 miles in the pouring rain from Paris to Versailles, shouting “We want bread!” all along the way. They demanded to see the king. They were particularly angry with Marie Antoinette, the Austrian-born queen who lived a life of great profligacy and extravagance amid the squalor and poverty of the masses. To the mob’s calls for “bread!” this beautiful despot is said to have retorted: “Let them eat cake!”

It is the year 2014, yet we are still seeing manifestations of the legacy of that very paragon of vice. The latest Social Weather Stations survey shows that 9.3 million Filipinos categorize themselves as “hungry” while 12 million consider themselves “poor.” Eighty-seven percent of Filipino families are so lacking in proper food that they have resorted to eating “alternative food,” such as soy sauce, bagoong and salt, their one-way ticket to early death.

But do our “good and honorable” public officials even care? How can they be bothered with the mundane sorrows of the poor when they are distracted by their own worldly concerns, now condensed into the two polarities of how to stay in power permanently and how to be rich beyond even our power to imagine? Some of our supposed “public servants” hoard and hide stolen artworks that, for sheer volume and value, would put to shame many of the world’s art galleries. Some own private gardens that would make London’s famous Kew Gardens look somewhat askew and awry, possess personal aviaries where the caged birds sing sad songs of prison and bondage, and collect imported and expensive orchids that reek of rotting rafflesia.

These people of the lie dispense cakes heavily laced with the vanilla syrup of graft and corruption, following to the letter the exhortation of their 18th-century idol and icon to give the people cake to stuff their hungry mouths with, to make them think they are full and therefore happy, to silence them.

What wild, wily wind rules their minds? What raging river agitates their hearts? What is the source of their insatiable hunger to amass hundreds of hectares of land, not a single dust or mote of which they can take with them to hell when they die? How can you presume to be the owner of birds, fish and flowers when these are the handiwork of nature, the creations of a giving God? Why couldn’t they be happy with the billions of pesos they already have, hidden in offshore accounts in far Tortugas? Greed is fed by the hunger to have it all, and that hunger arises from being a jar without a rim and without a bottom.

Augustus Caesar, a politician first and foremost, made it a point to court the starving masses. Panem et circenses—bread and circuses—were his way of pacifying Rome’s restless and discontented mobs. He spared no expense in staging spectacular forms of public entertainment such as chariot races, gladiator contests and mock sea battles. The colonies of the empire were regularly pillaged and plundered for the grain that would later be distributed for free to the poor citizens of Rome.

The use of smoke and mirrors continues to this day. How is the giving of cheese balls and grocery items to DepEd employees who, as we all know, are already getting more than enough bonuses and perks on top of their regular salaries, connected to the business of education? Is the three-ring circus we euphemistically call the Philippine government not providing enough amusement to the people as it is? Isn’t the bread line, which gets longer and longer by the day, proof that it’s really, really fun in the Philippines?
Antonio Calipjo Go is the academic supervisor of Marian School of Quezon City ([email protected]).